Typical Pitfalls in Agile Development

At JavaPolis 2006 Jutta Eckstein gave a presentation called Typical Pitfalls in Agile Software Development. One pitfall from the presentation that echoes Brian Marick’s keynote at XP Day Toronto 2007 is to watch out for an agile project executing when there is unclear business value.

Of course, this advice applies to any software development project whether or not you are using an agile development process. Be especially careful to avoid choosing to pilot agile on a project with unclear business value.

In their presentations both Jutta and Brian remind us to be wary of focusing strictly on agile practices without understanding the values and principles that underpin the practices. Their presentations got me to go back and read the principles behind the Agile Manifesto.